donhearl wrote:

Hello Forum,

A few posts up I was troubleshooting the hum in my Surfy Bear reverb. I found that my particular issue was the power supply. I found a super quiet power supply in the Asian Power Devices DA-24F12. It is the 2A model. Perfect for the reverb and low noise interaction with my other pedals.

Cheers,

Don

I had the same issue and came to the same result: Upgrade the power supply and no mo' hum.

I used this one from amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q2E5IXW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

$6.99 shipped.

Wouldn't the C10 mod change the amount of bass coming out of the reverb rather than the requested bass reduction reaching the reverb?

I was a bit surprised to see the suggested 'cuts' on your blog when I added the C10 mod, since the C10 mod is normally about increasing the bass, for which no cuts are needed as you can simply switch in additional capacitors in parallel to the existing one.

It's also when I did that mod, I noticed that the lug numbering of all the pots in the Surfy Bear schematics seem to be 'incorrect'/reversed. 1 should be 3 and 3 should be 1. Or am I seeing this the wrong way?

On a more personal note: I have both the reverb and the tremolo, built into pedals, but I still need to do the lettering/graphics. I'm inclined to label them "Surfy Verb" and Surfy Trem" but I'm feeling kinda guilty/uncomfortable to change the original name. So, what's the story behind the 'bear-name'?

Also, years ago I first found your website when I was looking for info into building an amp based on the Tech21 character pedals.
Now that you have a Fender reverb and a Fender tremolo, are there any plans to eventually offer an amp kit? Hopefully following the same philosophy as for the Surfy Bear, namely a copy of a circuit topology, replacing tubes by FET's, rather than the Tech21 character pedals which emulate the sound/tone instead of the original circuit.

Last edited: Jul 18, 2017 04:49:03

bjoish wrote:

Pots in the Surfy Bear schematics are 'upside-down'. Same as on the colour picture.

By schematic I mean the circuit. For example:

The C10 mod explained in words would be:
"Solder an additional capacitor from lug 2 of the tone pot to lug 3 of the mixer pot."
But as you can see in the schematic above, the lug labeled '3' of the mixer pot is connected to the dry signal, so you'd solder it incorrectly based on the schematic. That's what I meant by saying that the numbering of the lugs on all the pots in the schematic are incorrect.

bjoish wrote:

I needed a name and my name 'Björn', means Bear in Swedish
For the moment we have no plans for an amp, maybe in the future.

Hey, great story! I live in Belgium and there are many guys named Björn here but I never realised its meaning.
If you eventually build the amp it should be a Blonde named Agnetha or a blackface called Frieda.

If you are curious about how a FET-emulated amp would sound like, you can disconnect the reverb pan from your SurfyBear and connect the RevOut signal to a 8ohm speaker.

It's worth a try I guess, who knows what interesting sounds will come from it, but since the drive circuit is voiced for a reverb tank, wouldn't it sound a bit tinny because of the high pass filtering?

I have some more questions:
1) muffled dry signal
I like the reverb at lower mix settings because my dry signal is still crisp and also at higher mix settings because the highs of the reverb will compensate for the loss in my dry signal and there isn't that much dry signal left anyway.
But at intermediate mixer settings I sometimes want a bit more 'hifi' sound and would like a less muffled dry signal. So I added a 'dry cut' switch to have a 100% wet output. This way I can mix in my unaltered dry signal with an active mixer (currently using a Boss LS2 pedal).
My 'dry cut'-switch simply connects lug 1 of the mixer pot (which is labeled '3' in the schematic above) to ground. This seems to work fine but I wonder if this is the best way to go. Especially with regard to the output impedance of the wet signal, since the mixer pot then becomes a 'reverb volume pot'.

2)gain trim pot
I haven't touched the ones in the Surfy trem but couldn't resist the urge to give the one in the Surfy Bear a spin...
I didn't mark the original position and I know it's not really all that critical: simply turn until it sounds fine in most settings with most guitars.
But what is the factory setting? At what Ohm are these set?
I noticed that the 'gain trimpot' has gone through several versions, from a simple resistor connected to the dwell pot(?) to an actual trimpot in various places(?)
In my version I think it's R9 in the schematic labeld at 0 Ohm.
What does the trimpot actually do that you couldn't do by turning the dwell down a bit?
What would the actual 'calibration' process be, starting from 0 ohm on the trimpot and going up, listening for what?, or looking on a scope for what?

Last edited: Jul 18, 2017 18:01:49

bjoish wrote:

Regarding the FAQ schematic for C10-mod. Yes, the cuts are actually not needed if you accept to just increase the onboard capacitor.

Hi Bjorn, interesting discussion (and cool to learn about your name).
Separate from your kit, your description is what I've seen generally accepted as "C10 mod" (simply increasing value of C10) and applies in traditional tanks as well. What a thread man! 80-something pages & still going.

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

Hello again, i have finished the build and it works...is it normal for the enclosure of the pedal to get really hot?
I put it in a small pedal enclosure and it gets almost too hot to touch.

Last edited: Jul 24, 2017 07:33:48

Is it ok if i screw the board with the metal plate of the enclosure to a bigger metal enclosure of my old broken tube amp ?
I dont wanna fuck up the heat pad, also how tight should u screw the pcb to the case? Can something happen if you screw it down so the mosfets touch the pcb?

Last edited: Jul 25, 2017 00:06:22

Thanks for the help, ill just screw the plate that the pcb is now on to a bigger enclosure, hope its all good with the reverb, ive only plugged it it once and didnt play with it really cause it was getting hot.

orbitbot wrote:

I read through the whole message chain before ordering, but not sure if I missed it; was the Dwell mod/schematic on the special reverb with the stacked mix pots ever released?

Hi Orbitbot
What do you mean with Dwell mod/schematic?

The stacked-mixer feature is not a part of the kit.
However, on our FAQ (http://www.surfyindustries.com/faq) you can find out howto add this feature yourself.

Hello! I just soldered my Surfy Reverb pedal and so far I'm pretty happy with the sound (on my home amp), definately much better that any spring emulation that I tested so far (because i wanted something small) and gave up, because there was so good cheap solution. Anyway!
I noticed quite a strong volume difference between the bypass clean sound compared to if I don't have the effect in the chain. (I soldered the bypass like in the kit user guide: http://www.surfyindustries.com/download/SurfyIndustries-SurfyBear_Kit-UserGuide.pdf)
Is there something I can do about it? Is it normal? (I hope not?)

orbitbot wrote:

Ack! I meant to write "Decay", and meant the adjustable decay demonstrated in this video at 1:26 https://youtu.be/dQJTb8BVsKY?t=1m26s ...

No I am sorry, that model was only build in a small quantities for testing the concept.